Shared Cataloging Program (SCP) Monthly Update – April 2012

By Adolfo Tarango, Head, Systemwide Collection Services

Last month we distributed the first set of records for the Alexander Street Press collection, Theatre in Video (350 titles). This is also the first time SCP has distributed bibliographic records for videos. Theatre in Video contains performances of plays and film documentaries. Included are live television broadcasts of New York productions from the 1950s, experimental performances from the 1960s and 70s, and revivals of classical works. The collection contains performances from as early as the 1930s.

Other major monograph distributions for the month were for Open Access (801 titles, of which 782 were National Academy Press titles), Springer (486 titles), Wiley (136 titles), ACM (124 titles), IEEE (121 titles), and Apabi (52 titles). The only significant serial distributions were for Open Access (147 titles), most of which were DOAJ titles.

In response to a request from CDL’s Joint Steering Committee, quarterly package cataloging statistics now show if a package’s title count had a net increase or net decrease from the previous quarter. The first quarter statistics are posted at http://www.cdlib.org/services/collections/scp/docs/2012q1.pdf. Additionally, the Chinese language packages are grouped together and presented at the end after the statistics for California documents. We hope these changes will help make our work efforts more visible and allow you to find information of interest more quickly.

SCP is now ready to move forward on the Unicode transition. Test files have been posted for each of the campuses which contain records for the same set of titles we sent for testing earlier this year. The files include Chinese records with problem characters, a record in each JACKPHY language except Yiddish, and records in Cyrillic, Thai, and Vietnamese, as well as a few Western European languages. The records contain a 599 with the text UPD |b Unicode test |c 120419. A text file of the records is provided for comparison purposes. Please report any problems you have with the test file records to either Kate (kgarveyclasby@ucsd.edu) or Adolfo (atarango@ucsd.edu) within the next three weeks. The timeline below list the type of files you will be receiving over the next several weeks. Assuming no problems are reported, permanent distribution of the SCP files in Unicode will commence with the files posted on May 14, 2012.

SCP Unicode transition timeline:

Apr 16   MARC8 files
Apr 19   Unicode test file
Apr 23   MARC8 files
Apr 30   MARC8 files
May 7    MARC8 files
May 9    Deadline for problem reports on Unicode files
May 14  Unicode files

Until next month …